


The Falling Feather

by TerzaRima



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Mortality, Peace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 05:42:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25838245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerzaRima/pseuds/TerzaRima
Summary: When Joe tried to make Andy wear a bullet-proof vest to bed, Nile realized that people who have lived for centuries might not have ever had the opportunity to learn the healthiest ways to manage their grief.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 20
Kudos: 266





	The Falling Feather

“And these Thy gifts, which we are about to-” crashes erupted from the other room.

“Why does it matter? It’s comfortable, flexible, and I know you have slept in worse, boss-”

“-bounty. Through Christ, our-”

“Joe, I am fucking done with you! Nicky, tell your boyfriend to get back in line.”

Nile struggled to keep a grasp on her cup of coffee as Andy stormed into the kitchen. Joe had bought her a set at a gallery showing Barnett Newman paintings. The rest were lost in a tussle with a crew of Alt-Right vandals eager to knife “degenerate art” and this was the only mug Nile had been able to salvage . 

It contained fond, Nazi-punching memories and Nile refused to lose it to one of Andy and Joe’s blowouts. 

“Amen,” Nicky serenely finished grace and began to spread orange marmalade on a slice of toast. 

“Oh so it’s my fault for trying to keep you safe? And you know ‘boyfriend’ does not describe a tenth of what this man is to me-” 

Joe walked in behind her, carrying an MTV. Nile would have recognized the piece of equipment anywhere, but considering it was nine AM in a mountain cottage just north of Geneva, she didn’t see a particular need for a bullet proof vest.

“I will not call you ‘eternal lovers’, you cheesy fuck,” Andy pounded the table, upsetting the toast Nicky was just about to bite into. Apparently that was enough to inspire him to intervene.

“Boss, you know he wants to help-”

“It is a perfectly reasonable title!” Joe interjected.

“You do not need to coddle me,” Andy grabbed her jacket off the rack by the door, “I was taking care of myself before your great-great-great-great-great grandfathers knew how to clean their own asses.”

“Oh very mature, Andromache,” Joe mocked, “such childish insults really befit a five thousand year-old woman!”

Andy roared, reached into her boot, and threw a small dagger right by Joe’s head, hitting a flower in the daisy-patterned wallpaper perfectly in the center. Then, she was gone.

For a moment, all was silent. Joe walked to the wall and pulled the knife out before returning to sit at the breakfast table. Nicky wordlessy passed him a piece of buttered toast. 

“Well,” he muttered, “that went better than I expected.”

~~~+~~~

The first few weeks after their escape from Merrick’s lab had been a mad dash of activity all over Europe. They infiltrated a human trafficking ring in the Netherlands, raided a sweatshop in Italy, beat up a gang harassing refugees in Sweden, and even prevented an assasination in Greece. However, it became clear that despite Andy’s superhuman martial skill and refusal to acknowledge her new limitations, she needed to rest. Thus, they had spent the last week resting in a cozy alpine chalet on the French-Swiss border that they had purchased before the area became a natural park.

Sometimes, (in between planning missions, missing her family and trying to wrap her head around the realities of such a long, long life) Nile would take a moment to breathe and look out around her, in awe of her life. As a kid, even with the benefits from her father’s death, there never seemed to be enough money left over to push their little family squarely into the middle class. Vacations were a rarity and mostly consisted of spending a week with her aunt in Atlanta. Before going into the Corp, Nile had never been outside of the United States.

Now, she was sitting on the porch of a French cottage, sipping artisan Spanish coffee and watching two hawks weave an invisible helix above the Jura mountains. 

She smiled to herself. It was almost as though she was one of those rich kids from her high school who had backpacked their way through Europe the summer after senior year instead of working or enlisting. She was probably even more spoiled than they were; she was accompanied by the best tour guides in the world and had an unlimited budget due to centuries of hidden treasure and subtle investment. 

Immortality had its benefits. Andy had promised to take her to Ethiopia next and show her where coffee was invented.

Though, as Andy’s condition demonstrated, it wasn’t complete immortality. And of course, Nile wasn’t happy that Andy could die at any time, but well… despite what Joe and Nicky seemed to think, she wasn’t on her deathbed. 

“Nile! Can you help me carry these in?” Nicky called. As he rounded the corner on the path towards their chalet, Nile could see his face was red from exertion.

“Did you walk into town to get these?” Nile sprinted towards him, taking half of the books from the parcel Nicky held in his arms. He nodded.

“Andy took the car, although perhaps I should have waited. It’s been a while since I’ve had to hike like that and I should have bought paperbacks instead.”

Nile looked through the books intently as he fought to catch his breath. 

“ _ When Bad Things Happen to Good People _ ,  _ The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying _ ,  _ Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs _ ,” she tried to not laugh at that last one, “Nicky, what are these?” 

“Books!” he responded brightly. 

“Obviously. But umm, why these ones?” 

“I thought they’d help,” he said, “maybe bring her some peace.”

Nile had heard worse ideas in her life, but she struggled to remember when.

“You cannot give these to her, Nicky. She will lose it.”

“Well that’s the thing, Nile,” he said calmly as though this was a very normal way to deal with death and not at all absolutely insane, “I’m not going to  _ give _ them to her. I’ll just leave them about the chalet for her to find.”

Nile struggled to imagine that going well. Andy sitting on the toilet, casually pursuing  _ A Grief Observed _ .

She honestly didn’t know which was worse; Joe’s blatant smothering or Nicky’s passive-aggressive attempts at intervention.

“Nicky, she is not dying. She has a good thirty, maybe even forty years left. Do you really want to start all this up now?”

Nile thought of her father’s death. Yes, it had been sudden, but he had been a marine in Iraq under the Bush administration. His potential death had overshadowed every birthday, every holiday, even his leaves. As terrible as that day had been when she heard the knock at her apartment door and  _ knew _ what it was, some small part of her had felt a strange sort of relief. She had worked through years of grief and guilt to understand that that was because when he died, she no longer had to live in fear of his death. The worst had already happened.

Life was just a feather floating in the air. Occasionally, a breeze might lift it up again, but gravity would always prevail. It was torture to wait for it to fall.

Nicky looked at her sadly.

“Nile, you are young,” he sounded tired, “But we have known Andromache since before the New World was even known.”

He must have caught the look on her face, because he clarified, “To Europeans.”

Nicky continued. 

“What to you is ages and ages will never be enough time for us. In the monastery they taught us to comfort the dying, to give them last rites. But Andromache doesn’t believe in anything,” he gently took the books from her, “Please, this is something I can do. Please let me do it.”

He walked towards the cottage, boots trailing mud onto the porch. He stood, waiting. Nile sighed and opened the door for him.

~~~+~~~

When Andy returned that evening, she didn’t even enter the cottage. 

Upon hearing a car approach, Joe and Nicky stood up from their fondue and grabbed their nearest weapons. Nile had left her gun in the other room, so she brandished her dipping fork. 

“Nile, get your ass in the car!” Andy called. Joe tried to come with her, probably to tell Andy off for abandoning her family, but Nicky grabbed his hand. He gently held his partner back as Nile pulled on her coat.

“Try to talk some sense into her. She needs to stop risking her neck,” Joe growled.

“Be careful,” Nicky intoned, “she gets antsy when she’s like this.”

“Hurry up or I’m leaving you!” Andy yelled.

“We’ll be fine,” Nile assured them, “you have my number-”

“Nile if you aren’t here in five seconds so help me-”

She sprinted out the door, wondering what hole in the wall Andy would drag her to to drink away their miseries. All she hoped was that the night wouldn’t end in a fight.

As it turned out, they went to a McDonald’s.

“I can’t believe we’re in France and you took us to a literal McDonald’s.”

“Most important travel tip, kid; you can’t get food poisoning if you don’t eat actual food. Besides, it’s better here anyway,” the voice from the intercom said something that Nile’s forgotten year of highschool French had not prepared her for. Andy told it to shut up in French. Her tone was clear in every language, “Now hurry up and say what you want.”

“Ummmm, I don’t know-”

“It’s a McDonald’s-”

“Okay, okay, I guess I’ll take le P’tit Fondu with wedge potatoes and two chocolate macaroons.”

“ _ Quarante McNuggets, un le P’tit Fondu avec, hummm, Deluxe Potatoes, deux macarons au chocolat, et deux Oreo McFlurries _ ,” Andy enunciate clearly before turning to Nile, “you might think you don’t want a McFlurry, but you really do.”

Later, after they paid for their food (cash, of course) and parked at an abandoned overlook, Nile was forced to agree. As good as the burger, potato wedges, and forty McNuggets that Andy refused to share were, the ice cream was absolutely perfect.

“This reminds me of when I was a sophomore, and we’d all pile into my friend, Laila’s car, looking for something to do on a Saturday night,” Nile laughed, “We were all broke, you know, so the only thing we could afford to do was get McFlurries and listen to Odd Future or Kendrick in her car.”

Andy smiled, in that brittle way that adults did when trying to connect with a youth they no longer understood. 

“When I was a girl, the young men of my clan would gather honey in clay pots during the summer months. We would use it to sweeten our hot drinks during winter,” she took another bite of McFlurry.

“The first time I tasted sugarcane was while Quynh and I were on campaign, repelling Alexandros at, oh some river I can’t remember now. All I remember was that there were elephants and after the battle, she kissed me and her lips were sweet.”

Nile tried to focus on finding the last few chunks of Oreo in her cup instead of Andy’s wistful tone. Her role here was to listen, not to judge, interject, or analyze. Yet, she wondered how Andy felt about talking about Quynh since losing her all those years ago. 

Sometimes her fellow immortal’s traumas were landmines, Nile could hardly guess, much less navigate. 

“I’m not afraid of dying, you know,” Andy whispered in that almost growl-like register of hers, “I just wish I knew I wouldn’t be old and useless when I did it.”

“We don’t know how any of this works, immortality or mortality. Maybe you won’t age, you'll just have to be careful about your injuries,” Nile trailed off as she saw the incredulous look on Andy’s face.

“When I left the house this morning, I drove until I couldn’t anymore. Because I had a back ache,” Andy laughed, “I thought I was dying. I had never felt one of those before. And then I realized; I’m fucking old,” she tossed her spoon aside and guzzled down the rest of her McFlurry.

“No one makes it out of here alive, kid.”

Nile finished her own ice cream and set the empty cup on top of the console. Then, she reached over to hold Andy’s hand.

For a moment, she thought the pale woman wouldn’t let her touch her. But then, she relaxed.

“When I was young, people did not live to be old. They fell off their horses in battle or died in childbed or caught illness in the winter. They died so fast- in a moment or two days at the most. Once a boy broke his neck and couldn’t move. We camped in the same spot for a week, until he couldn’t drink water anymore. And then we let him die,” 

Nile didn’t dare to consider what that meant. Andy continued.

  
“So we mourned him and buried his toys and tools in a pit and lowered his body in a shroud. And we moved on.”

She squeezed Nile’s hand. 

“What those shit-for-brains don’t realize is that by treating me like this, like I’m fragile, they’re just making my death lag on for years. I can’t remember that little boy’s name, but I remember how his parents wept at his grave.” 

If your death is too long, Nile thought, people will forget how you lived.

She remembered how she had to fight to hold onto memories of her father, unmarred by his death. It was as if she was small again, being tossed in the air in Bessemer Park, the flowers in bloom around them. But the borders of the scene were fuzzy, and only stable as long as Nile forgot the obvious.

Her father was dead. Her mother and brother and Laila and Andy and Joe and Nicky and Booker and everyone she ever knew were going to die. And she was going to have to follow them. 

Nile reached over to embrace Andy. The older woman looked almost surprised, but she leaned into the hug as well. Nile fit her face into the soft intersection between Andy’s neck and shoulder. She would only have so much time, but that was how it was for everyone. They were all born with nothing and everything else that came was a blessing.

“I can’t hope to understand. But I’ll try,” she unwrapped her arms from Andy and gave her a soft punch in the bicep, “I promise not to give you any breaks, boss. Besides, I need all the training you can give me.”

Nile wondered if Andy rolled her eyes to keep tears from falling. 

“Obviously. You’re a badass, kid, but you still have a lot to learn.”

Andy turned on the engine and prepared to put the car into reverse, clearly believing their talk was over. Nile cleared her throat. 

“I think you should tell Nicky and Joe what you told me. They need help dealing with all of this too,”

“I honestly have no idea how to start that conversation.”

Andy had never sounded more vulnerable. Nile looked at her, and for a second she swore she could see the millenia written on her face. All the battles, betrayals, broken hearts, were expressed in that simple admittance of fallibility, Then, the moment passed. 

Nile pulled out the bag with the chocolate macarons from McDonald’s.

“Well, dessert is never a bad place to start.”

Andy smiled.

~~~+~~~

That night, Nile listened to the soft voices coming from the kitchen. She felt like a child again, in her bedroom in Chicago, falling asleep to the soft murmurs of the grown folks’ conversation.

She knew that Andy, Nicky, and Joe (even Booker when her subconscious included him) had ages, literal centuries of love between them. Confronting the inevitable would not be easy, but life would not be life without death, and there was some assurance in the inevitable end to the constant cycle of dying and returning. 

Nile kissed the gold cross around her neck, prayed for the people she loved, and fell easily asleep. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I hope y'all enjoyed this one! Please stay safe and wear a mask.


End file.
